16: Wisteria - Mystery
It's strange. I'm not sure why everything finally clicked. She's a complete mystery. But she's mine, she's exactly what I've always wanted to be, and nothing can ever take that away from her.
Wisteria 1.
The room was gray; that icky gray that isn't dark, but most certainly can't be described as light. The gray that tired eyes have to squint through, and bright eyes have to adjust to. The gray that makes you feel sick and tired and heavy. The light switch in most rooms was on the left side of the doorway. The same was true here. The one central light buzzed on to reveal a cluttered room, wires and metal scattered everywhere and a large desk with a computer monitor at the edge of where the light in the room faded into darkness.
The falcon flew in front of me, landing next to the screen. I stepped hesitantly in, my footsteps echoing on the marble floor. The room looked older as if it had never been remodeled, like the majority of the rooms in the building. I watched my footing as I walked. Small screws and bolts and cogs were littered around the floor. I approached the desk, seeing many small sticky notes scattered about along with countless papers, scraps of blueprints, and a small journal labeled Progress.
I delicately picked up the book, opening it to observe its contents. Most of it was filled with calculations, brief sketches, and notes from Borg to himself about which combination of components worked best together for a certain function. However, every once and a while there was a note scribbled angrily in the margins or on top or to the side of a drawing, or sometimes sitting on a page by itself. Alone and isolated. They said things like 'how many of them will it take?', 'It hurts me to dismantle another one of them.' and 'I couldn't tell her about them.' Who was them?
My first instinct was to say the nindroid army. There were plenty of them, and the subjects of the notes were clearly droids. Borg had a habit of getting attached to his creations. But the nindroid army was most definitely made in a remodeled room, certainly one bigger than this. Then again, there was a good chance the journal could have been brought from another room. It wasn't far-fetched at all to think Borg had carried around a notebook of ideas during his inventing golden age.
I turned my eyes to the screen in front of me, attempting to turn it on… nothing. The falcon pecked on the side of the desk at something. Papers. I picked them up to observe their contents. Nothing particularly interesting. But the falcon still pecked at the table where they had been. I set the papers down, and upon closer inspection the table appeared to have a small door embedded in it. I flipped it open to see a switch. I glanced back at the falcon, only to receive blank glances in return. I returned my eyes to the switch, my fingers stretching out, and carefully flipping it upward.
Lights on the ceiling in front of me clicked on, dim, but lighter than the rest of the room. They seemed to go on endlessly, down the ever-growing room until the wall at the far end was finally revealed. And the ground.
16
16 large rectangular holes in the ground. Big enough for bodies. Mangled, dysfunctional, metal bodies.
I was standing in the middle of a mechanical graveyard.
My feet moved backwards on instinct, my heart pounding, legs shaking. The falcon flew over to the first of the graves, landing on a small plaque in front of it. He squawked, beckoning me to join him. I shook my head softly. I could feel tears forming in my eyes.
"Why would you bring me here?"
He cried out to me again, insistent that I should come closer - look at the dead machinery.
I closed my eyes tightly and took in a deep breath. Once I reopened them, I began taking small steps towards the bird. As I approached the first grave my eyes were better able to observe the contents. A female droid. Mouth gaping open, eyes that used to be bright white in color, one burned out, the other simply broken. She had bright white hair, now tangled and dirtied. Deep gray skin, except for her lips - white like her hair. Stubbs of wires sat where her arms should be. I large seam split her face down the middle, and a mess of wires sat where her stomach would have been. There was nothing below that. She sat there, barely half of a body, staring the empty confinement she sat in.
The tears slipped down my cheeks so easily. I was used to feeling them there by now. I kneeled down in front of her, where the falcon stood. "What's the point? What is this?" The falcon jumped off of the plaque he stood on. A sort of memorial stone if you wanted to call it that. I pushed the thick layer of dust from its surface, squinting to make out the message inscribed on it.
Violet 1.
Borg always named his droid units the same way. The name of their first software, followed by what update of the software was specific to that model. This droid was the first one to utilize the Violet software.
Violet.
That software sounded familiar.
I looked up over the four rows, my vision clouding with more and more water.
16
16 graves
Hello
Welcome to
Borg Industries
I'm P.I.X.A.L.
The Primary
Interactive
X ternal
Assistant
Lifeform
Cyrus's designated
Assistant and automated
Tour guide
16th
Model in my line
16
"These… they're all…"
Me.
These were my technological ancestors, my sisters. They were versions of myself I can never know of or hope to understand. I was sitting in front of 16 of my own gravestones. My own bodies, lying here, empty and lifeless. Dead. Motionless. It's unnatural. Worse than a human corpse.
These bodies don't decay, they don't get absorbed into the earth. They lay silently for eternity, just the same as the moment life left them. That moment defines the rest of their existence, that horrifying image never gets erased. Nothing changes after that, nothing moves. It's like walking through a still image. There's nothing in them anymore. They are the definition of empty. Cold. Hollow.
I walked through the graves slowly, following the falcon as he lead me along his desired path. I took in each appearance, each slight change from model to model.
Violet 2. Violet 3.
Purple was added slowly to the design. First the lips, then the eyes. Sometimes the hair. Allways different shades.
Violet 4. Violet 5. Lavender 1.
He experimented with different shapes. Sometimes the bodies seemed very square, other times the design was more circular.
Lavender 2. Heather 1. Heather 2. Heather 3.
Always purple. He would never let go of the color. Never blue, or red, or green, It was all black and white and gray… and purple.
Mauve 1. Mauve 2.
All of the software was named after purple. All different shades of purple. Dark ones, light ones, soft ones, harsh ones, they were all accounted for.
Mauve 3. Iris 1. Iris 2.
I studied each body with a sense of longing. What was this version of me like? Did they feel anything? Would they like who I am now? What was my father thinking when he built this one? Sometimes there would be little trinkets or notes in the grave with the bodies. Some of them had quick, sweet memories scribbled out on them about the time we celebrated his birthday, or the time I tried to dance with him. It was always Pixal, too. Never the model name, just Pixal, like they were all the same person to him. Sometimes he would spell it out P.I.X.A.L., sometimes just PIXAL, and on occasion just… Pixal. I liked the way that one looked. Like a name. A person.
Some of the notes were work notes. Some about how hard it was to get the skin to feel natural on Heather 2, or the tricky wire situation in the left elbow joint of Mauve 3. There were many that simply read Thermal Coil! In large letters. I chuckled, knowing how often he had struggled, even with mine. They also gave brief glimpses into his struggle in making me. The impractical hardware, the unnatural programming, getting those elements to mesh. The Overlord.
He fought over how much he should submit to the Overlord. Obey his directions exactly? Try to sneak in a few ways to reverse the process? He couldn't live with himself if he didn't at least try. He wrote it all down on paper. The physical realm, so that the Overlord couldn't get to it. It kept him sane, working on me. On these bodies. On Pixal.
Pixal seemed like such a much larger experience now, one that I was hardly a part of, like I had lost my memory. Each plaque was a new story I had never heard about myself. Each body was a phase of my life I didn't know I had been through. I would kneel in front of each body for a moment, soaking in the image while the falcon would sometimes fly down with them, finding particular notes he would carry in his beak for me to read. I would cry, and laugh, and sit and listen to the crisp nothingness in the air before he would gently beckon me over to the next one. The first few went slowly. The rest seemed to go all too fast. I ran out of information too quickly. I craved more. My cheeks were stained, and small droplets littered the floors and the papers I held.
As I approached the last grave, I realized… it was empty. There was nobody to fill this hole, because this one, the last one, the 16th one… was mine. Really truly mine.
Wisteria 1.
This was meant for the body stuck on Chen's island. The one the world thought was gone when Zane's hard drive lost track of me. There was nothing to put in this pit. There had been no trace of me remaining when I had left. As if I never existed.
Only one thing lay on the marble on that floor alongside my reflection: a few old papers held together by a paper clip. I glanced over at the falcon. He wasn't going to get this one for me. This one for me.
I shifted my legs, slowly lowering myself down. Soon I had two feet firmly planted in my grave. I glanced back at the falcon one more time.
"You… don't have to come with me for this one."
I turned back to the papers, lowering myself to my knees one more time, my body now completely consumed by the four walls around me.
I reached for the papers, and gently lifted them into my hands, reading the title page:
P.I.X.A.L.
I flipped to the first page as I read what I easily recognized as my father's handwriting.
P.I.X.A.L. was an attempt to create life. To make an android who could serve as an assistant and a friend to all those who need one. Namely, me. The hardest part in this process has been capturing the spark of a female. Capturing grace and strength matched with kindness and security. It took me 16 attempts, but I made her. She's unique and a bit unconventional, but she's not supposed to be anything else. She is not made for anyone else to judge. She's my daughter, she was made to be something I could be proud of. She was made for small moments and strong connections.
It's strange. I'm not sure why everything finally clicked. She's a complete mystery. But she's mine, she's exactly what I've always wanted her to be, and nothing can ever take that away from her. She was made in order to make herself, to be as human as possible so I could have someone real to stand beside me.
I won't be rebuilding her. Not ever. You can't make a person come back, so why should she? She became a unique individual, I will never be able to recapture that. So, this marks the end of the P.I.X.A.L. line. She will forever live in my heart as my greatest creation. Even if her legacy doesn't live on in the eyes of the world, she will always be remembered by those who knew her.
Goodbye, my flower.
I could hardly read. My hands shook so violently, my tears fell so quickly, my heart ached so dearly. I wanted to hug my father, tell him how I loved him, how selfish I had been, hiding from him for all this time, thank him for working tirelessly on me.
The final page was a copy of my final blueprints. Attached in the corner was a small section of Zane's blueprints - his heart. I smiled. I studied the prints for a moment, finding any number of things that had changed. The dent Kai had given my forearm. The paint designs that had scratched off my shoulder, and then been crudely redrawn by the best efforts of Cole. The wiring Jay had altered, the Samurai X attachments Nya had given me, the small good luck bead Lloyd had given to me, woven into my hair, the quickly fading star sticker on my palm. A lot had changed since I had been created. I hadn't decided much of it for myself. All of the people around me had affected me in so many small and simple ways.
But I guess that's what made me special. I was completely impressionable. I didn't have a set purpose, it became whatever people around me needed. I was… built to assist.
My back found its way to the floor. I looked up at the ceiling. The gray ceiling. The familiar and comforting gray I was used to seeing. I pressed the papers up against my chest. I had fulfilled so many roles. A monotone assistant, a puppet to the Overlord, a caring daughter, a comfort to Zane, a personal A.I., Samurai X, and now… whatever's next. I could do so much, fulfill so many needs. There were so many sides to me, so many shades, gray, and dark, and vibrant, and soft, and light and dull. But I guess in the end it doesn't really matter how many different shades I am because, in the end, it's all just…
purple.
Thanks so much for reading!
The 16 model thing is entirely canon, it was in her description for a while. I just took it the... extra step.
Last depressing chapter! You made it through! Yay!
